The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Hi, Mom. Time for me to write a letter to you on a blog that, as per usual, you probably won’t see. It only happens like twice a year. That’s okay, right?

My psychologist said, jokingly, that I was clearly put on this earth to expand your worldview, what with me being so out there in so many ways. I admit my life has gotten… non-standard. It’s all in ways that I am so goddamn happy about, but non-standard, certainly, is a word that could describe it. And you’ve had your issues with it. Who wouldn’t, I suppose.

But in the end, you’re in my court. You’ve come around. You support me in all my crazy endeavors. I mean, I’m baking and cooking you shit for Mother’s day, and I hope you enjoy the crap out of it. It makes me really happy to be able to do that. And I’m helping you with tech stuff, so much stuff, all the time. I’m there for you too. But not in the same way, you know? You always have my back, and you’ll always make sure I can get up from whatever disaster befalls me. You’ll always make sure I have time to do the fun things in life. I can’t ask for anything better than that. I really can’t.

Hey Mom! Thanks. Seriously. Happy Mother’s Day.

Well, the semester is over besides the tedious job of finishing up all my grading and turning in final grades. HOW DID IT GO?

Pretty well, I suppose.

This semester was most definitely a learning experience all around. I was expanding out of my comfort zone, teaching new stuff and generally being way the fuck more busy than I ever have been before. Well, mostly, anyway. I felt like I learned a lot, and I feel like next semester will be way more productive and useful than this one for my students because of what I learned. I do.

The biggest hurdle this semester was, totally, dealing with teaching my two “remedial” classes. It was just an experience I had never really had before, besides some one-off tutoring sessions with people at SEMO, and it was way different. I was dealing with people who had basically no confidence, and who did not understand things that, to me, seemed so very, very basic. I get why many people would not understand how to use a lot of the basic techniques of writing which I teach in most of my classes, but stuff like being unable to figure out what the main idea of a paragraph is? It’s kind of… weird. It requires a completely different style of teaching that I never really associated with college before. At the same time, in a lot of ways, it doesn’t. It requires you to treat them like they know what they’re doing, and force them to do things they’re uncomfortable with, in order to get them to the point where they can actually do what they need to do in order to survive. Forcing my reading class students to try to use these skills outside of the multiple choice format of the textbook was one of the smartest things I did. They struggled and hated it, but it gave them actual experience. It was nice. Same with my essay class. I graded them the same as anyone, just required shorter papers over easier topics. But I still pushed them to have transitions, and to write things that were worth reading. I didn’t give them a pass because they were struggling and, for the most part, they stepped up to the challenge.

Really, though, this semester was all a lesson in time management. Keeping track of four classes, what I’m doing in them and what is coming up, is hard! I normally just trust my brain to sort that stuff out, but with multiple classes on different time schedules doing similar things, I got confused pretty often. I am going to take WAY better notes next semester. Definitely.

Anyway, as much as I’m dreading a summer working at Kohl’s, I am glad it’s over and I can take a breather from teaching for awhile. It’s fun, it’s worthwhile, it’s what I want to do with my life at this point, but damn, is it draining sometimes. Taking a little while to do mindless work and hang out with boyfriends and stuff is exactly what I need.

I went shopping for clothing with my mother today.

It was potentially scary experience, you know? There’s just such a history of her trying to force me into masculine clothes, and even once I was living full time, trying to force me into very masculine but technically female clothes so as “not to upset anyone” and all kinds of ridiculous bullshit. I didn’t want this to be fighting about that sort of thing, and it seemed like it was going to be, as she’s super-concerned, for whatever reason, about what I am going to wear to that high school reunion. She even voiced concern that I would be “kicked out” which is ridiculous.

But it wasn’t that at all. I mean, I was as picky as I ever am about clothes and things of this nature, and she constantly had different ideas about what I should wear, so it was a lot of “No, mom, I don’t think that’ll work,” and so on… but we… you know. Went shopping for clothes as mother and daughter. And when we were done, it was kind of surprising to me how much that meant to me. She wasn’t going in there with some agenda. She seriously just wanted me to look good. We were doing a thing that mothers and daughters do.

My mom has done a lot of accepting, to be sure, but this… this just… it felt like proof, as opposed to just hearing it from her. I was in the women’s dressing room, trying stuff on, discussing these things, and again… it was… normal. It wasn’t awkward. It was just a thing we were doing.

Every time I think about it, it’s even more amazing to me. Maybe that’s silly.

Thanks, Mom.

CJ and I played Dungeon Twister. It had been awhile since I played, but I swept him pretty completely. It’s… an interesting game.

Being a game of basically complete information, where you know everything your opponent could do at any time, really, it’s so very, very unfriendly to new players. I obviously had figured out the game more than CJ had in his like one play of it, and it was really easy to sweep in and sneak through the gaps in his defense, because I knew what to look for and what I could do. I mean, I’m sure there are plenty of people more skilled that could beat me, but even with that slight experience gap, it was really no contest.

How do you overcome that? I mean, it’s the same sorts of problems you have in games like, say, a DotA, where you jump in to try to figure out the complicated rules and just get utterly destroyed. Or a Street Fighter or other fighting game, where you need to learn many characters patterns to be successful, but are often given nowhere to start, really. Or even something like Team Fortress 2 or some other very team-based shooter, where you need to build up a skillset in order to even be vaguely useful to your team. It’s such an amazing problem. It’s something that keeps people who could enjoy a strong, interesting multiplayer environment away.

When even a little bit of knowledge can basically knock you out of the “fun” bracket for playing with your friends, that shit is tough. I mean, I always play to win. I feel it would be an insult not to play any game I am playing to the best of my ability. But when I’m just crushing people, why would who I am destroying keep playing? And why would I want to play? I don’t really get much joy out of winning most of the time. It’s the game that’s fun. If my opponent is not having a good time, I don’t really want to be involved.

At the same time, something completely random and stupid like Mario Party is absolutely no fun, because you really have 0 control over what happens, and victories are completely and utterly empty. There’s nothing to really find there.

It’s a tough line to walk, I guess… I don’t know. TF2’s Coach program is a good idea in that direction, but also just doesn’t seem like it would work. I’d love to be coached by a friend (the little bit of time where Morbid Coffee coached me in Super Street Fighter IV was pretty awesome, and though I’m not GOOD, perse, I learned a lot about how to play Abel, even in that little session), but even among nice people volunteering for that job, I just wouldn’t be comfortable with that. A strong tutorial can help, but that sort of thing just can’t really teach a metagame. It’s hard to learn that stuff via anything but constant loss, and that’s the problem.

I don’t know. I’d like to feel like I can pull these sorts of games out, especially when I think they’re pretty neat like Dungeon Twister. But I am unsure how to do that, really.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.

Hello, and welcome to blog. Today I will blog. Prepare to blog.

So I talked about an issue yesterday with money and shit and it solved itself in the “aww but at least we’re not in financial trouble” sort of way. Which is better than being fucked over, I guess. Even though it said on the website I couldn’t, I sent the ticket people an e-mail asking if I could cancel my ticket order, and they said “Yeah, sure.” So that’s that. No PAX for me.
It’s probably for the best. It would have been a huge fucking strain on resources to go, especially for CJ, even with our “solution” options we were coming up with and watching disappear in real time. I just really wanted to go. I wanted to be at a point in my life where I can travel and do this kind of shit. I want to take my family to PAX, and Disney World, and creepy furry conventions, and all kinds of pointless fun shit. But we’re just not stable yet.
Still, I said on twitter and Talking Time that I had tickets. So I feel like an idiot now that I’ve bowed out. I should probably tell people, but I’m embarrassed, even though there’s nothing to fucking be embarrassed about. Oh well. Sorry. Don’t judge me for being an idiot, blog reader person. Thanks.

I like foods I used to hate.
Not like… in a crazy way, perse? It’s all kind of sensible stuff that I all the sudden am going “Fuck, I love this.” But like… mushrooms, okay? I never used to like mushrooms. Texture freaked me out, and taste was blah. But recently, I’ve been like “Wait a goddamn minute, I love mushrooms!” CJ has been making these sauteed mushroom and swiss burgers for me because of a random idea and having mushrooms in the fridge for some reason? And they are FANTASTIC. I love mushrooms on things now. I just kind of love eating mushrooms. When the fuck did that happen? Just one day, I’m like, “No, everything I’ve known is wrong, I want that.” It’s weird.

I bought some Adventure Time toys just to take pictures of them with Skylanders and Ponies. Because it entertained me for some reason. Then I posted them to twitter with dialog captions from the characters.
I may have a problem.

I just gave a test where 90% of my class failed. I was told that this is normal for this test. People don’t pass it. What the fuck.
I mean, I took this standardized practice test for this test? I got 2 questions wrong because the questions make no sense. I stared at these questions after the fact and could not figure out why my answer was wrong and not just as good as the actual answer. So that’s great, and says something about the test quality. It’s also a really, really hard grammar test, but they’re taking it in a writing course, not a grammar course. We covered some grammar, of course, but writing was always the focus. Did I focus the class wrong? Were they lying to me when they called it a writing course? I was always taught that grammar should come second in a writing course, because you need to focus on big picture problems with their writing, and that’s what I did, because that made sense to me. And now they all failed this test. Badly.
Apparently this has to affect their grade in some way. I’ll have to figure that out. That’s really shitty and silly. Seriously.

Okay, I’m going to go… TO WORK! I shall see you all later, blog people.

Word that starts with P.
Here’s my impression of my PAX experience so far.

“Oh, they’re sold out of 3 day passes? Are we doing this? Okay, let’s buy two days of passes, that’s all I can be there for anyway. Cool, got them. Now to do some research on travel and hote… HOLY FUCK. That’s… way more… than we thought… uh… can we afford this?”

Like, for serious. I don’t know if everything is being jacked up for the convention or whatever, but my goodness. It’s all significantly more than I expected. Which just kind of sucks. Because while I could probably potentially splurge with no issues, CJ is going to have issues with the super pricing. It’s all just… arg!

We did more research, and we THINK we can get it down to a reasonable level as long as we’re splitting a hotel room with a couple of nice dudes and taking some specific sneaky flights. So I guess the idea is to find said nice dudes now and go from there. Surely we can make that happen? We can’t be the only people wanting to cut the cost of this shindig down significantly. Surely it’ll work out.

Just… fuck. Makes me wonder why the fuck I even wanted to do this! Much better to stay hidden here at home for all time, right?

Brian will be here in two weeks or so.

THIS IS SO AMAZING.

How long have I been waiting for this? So long. I was bouncing around the room all day with excitement. I can’t wait to show him things. I can’t wait to hug on him again. I can’t wait for him and CJ to meet in person. I can’t wait to deal with all the little problems adding a third person to my little house is going to cause. I can’t wait to attempt to find a solution where three people sleep in the same bed comfortably.

I CANNOT FUCKING WAIT.

My family is coming together and I am so excited. I want a family portrait. I want to start planning things to do together. We should play through my copy of Risk Legacy all the way through! Play games! Start a Dungeons and Dragons or other Roleplaying Games night! But mostly just start living life and stop worrying about waiting for things to happen. The life I want, in a few weeks, will be officially set up. Things will be IN FUCKING PLACE romantically and, in general, socially. I can focus on wanting the sane things normal people want now! I CAN BE!

There’s sure to be issues. I’m sure to worry about this or that at some point. But right now, for serious, I have not a single worry about this not working out. I know we can handle anything that comes up. I know it.

I love Brian, and I love CJ, and we are going to be one fucking awesome family. Just you wait.

I drank an alcoholic beverage yesterday that I did not hate. Basically, I drank more yesterday than I have… well… ever? Note that this consisted of two fairly small glasses of something that probably wasn’t very alcoholic in general, as opposed to the small sips and miniscule glasses of wine I have had in the past. Still, it was an experience? It is an experience I will chronicle here now because, I dunno, it feels like a first to me. So.

Basically, we went over to Layne’s for her birthday. We had a nice time, sitting about and talking. Nothing exciting, perse, but just some nice conversation. But anyway, she’s like “I haven’t really drank in like 3 years so I’m going to!” So her husband was making her these drinks, Midori Sours, and Layne says “Try this, it doesn’t taste like alcohol, it tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher.”
Every time someone has said to me “You can’t taste the alcohol” or something similar, they have always been lying. It would always have a strong taste up front, and then just become alcohol on the back half, which I guess the drinker doesn’t notice because, you know, they drink. But Layne was 100% right this time. It just tasted like a watermelon Jolly Rancher. I was kind of shocked. I turned down the offer of them making one for me, out of habit more than anything I guess, but I was like “Wow, I could like… drink that.”

Afterwards, I tell this to CJ, and he’s like “Let’s make you one, then,” And I’m like “Okay, sure, experiment, let’s see if I can actually drink a thing for once.” So we run around town and buy this stuff, and I’m like “Alcohol expensive!” and he’s like “Shush, all this is a pretty fair price and it’s not like you drink much of it at once,” and we came home and he made me one and it was pretty good! Like really sweet. I think the stuff he put in that was like “sweet and sour?” Which probably kicked the sweet over the edge. Layne’s wasn’t QUITE as sweet. Maybe we should have put in something that was just “sour”? I dunno how drinks work, even though I have my e-bartending certificate. I am just guessing. Anyway, it was nice enough. I could drink a one of those if in a social situation where I am supposed to drink a thing.
Then he’s like, “Let’s try something apple-y instead of melon-y,” which I am all for because I like a sour sweet apple more than a sour sweet melon flavor, and he makes an Appletini, I guess? And I taste the alcohol right away there. Not a fan. I guess it’s because he added extra vodka? I’m really not sure. Again, the sour apple at the beginning was nice, but then at the end it’s just ALCOHOL! Just… bleh.
“I have one more idea,” he tells me, and he brings me this thing he calls a “Golden Apple” and tells me you’re supposed to drink all of it at once. This puts me on edge. To me that says, “This tastes horrible, so survive it quickly.” But I tried it, eventually. It was pretty bad. It was like ALCOHOL followed by RED HOTS and I’m like blerg. And he’s like “I thought you said you liked cinnamon,” he said (I type as he corrects my story as I type it because he’s reading over my shoulder and being all defensive). I’m like, “Sweet cinnamon, sure. Cinnamon sugar. Not like… red hots or whatever.” Anyway, I guess the red hot stuff was like… fucking Goldschlager? What? Weird. I’m going to get gold poisoning now.

Anyway, after having these things and watching Adventure Time, we went to bed. MOST EXCITING NIGHT OF DRINKING EVER, AMIRITE? But it was kind of nice to be involved in it for once, I guess, though I still don’t really get the appeal. Basically all that I really felt from it all was that my stomach felt weird. I dunno. I felt like I should eat something to keep my stomach from being upset. That doesn’t seem like a goal worth going after? Who knows. Maybe I just didn’t get to the point where it does whatever magical thing alcohol does that makes people want to learn to tolerate and actually enjoy it’s pretty godawful taste. I’m a fairly large lady, and again, I doubt what I drank had all that much actual alcohol content in it, though maybe I’m wrong there. Still, I have basically 0 points of comparison to determine if I was feeling any effects full on, so I dunno.

But yeah, I finally drank a thing, and it was like the most girly of all girly drinks in the world, so huzzah for me, I guess. Also, man, this is a rambly blog post! Oh well.

I have an invitation to my 10 year (!) high school reunion, and I suppose I am going to go for some reason or another. It’s… weird. I feel like I should go, almost have to, but in some ways I don’t know why.

Let’s face it, this reunion is going to be pretty well boring and awkward all around. The vast majority of attendees don’t know I’ve transitioned, so that’s going to result in either everyone completely ignoring me and staying far away from the freak, or having to answer a barrage of the same questions over and over again. I’m not sure which one would be worse, to be honest. On top of that, the reunion involves a mass, something I haven’t been to since, I dunno, Layne got married? (Well, I was at Jonathan and Shauna’s wedding, clearly, but that was Baptist, so it kind of doesn’t count?) That’ll be weird, certainly. Then we’re going to a winery which means drinking which is not really my bag in any way. Then I dunno what happens after that. Probably more drinking? That’s what people do, right? Finally, I don’t really have all that many friends from high school to meet and spend time with who I don’t already see on a regular basis. Most of my friends stuck around here, and we’re still friends, you know?

At the same time, I just feel like it would be stupid not to go. I mean, I live here. It’s like no trouble at all to go. What’s more, the last thing I want is people asking about me to those who know about my situation and they, inadvertently I’m sure, explaining my new life in a way I don’t agree with or, worse, ignoring it entirely. That idea bothers me. Not so much that they’re talking behind my back, people do that, but that they’d basically have no chance to find out what’s really going on even if they wanted to. They’ll be gone, and I almost certainly won’t even have a vague chance of seeing them again until five years from now or whatever. People liked me, even if I wasn’t super-close with them, you know? I don’t want to awkward things up in a way I can’t help with. Sure, me being there may awkward things up a bit too, but that’s different. I can explain myself, and what’s more, it’ll be really fucking clear that I am really fucking happy. I’ll have a boyfriend at my side, I’ll be looking good, and I’ll be happy, and that will come across. Maybe they’ll get it. (Plus, I think CJ would like to do something like go to a winery, which makes little sense for me to do, so maybe this is a nice way to do that for reasons I don’t feel like I can veto.)

There was a time I wanted to run away from my old life and disappear, you know? I thought it would be easier. But as I get older, and as I finally got around to transitioning, I realized that would be basically the worst idea. I love my family, I love my friends, I love this city, and I loved my life. Sure, I had one big, glaring problem with it, brain problems, but the life itself was FANTASTIC. I don’t want to forget it all happened, and hide from it. It made me who I am, and I’m so lucky to have been involved with awesome people and had such a good time of it, even while I was dealing with my issues.

So I guess I want to make sure I’m not hiding from that past just because it’s easier. I want to say to myself that there’s no problems here, because there aren’t. I want to step into that and show them I am successful, and awesome, just like them. I’m just a lady now, as I always was inside. Fuck, several of them knew about it back then.

I’m going. If it’s a disaster, it’s a disaster, but I feel like I have to do this. Worst case, CJ and I will run far away and go eat a snowcone and laugh about how stupid this idea to go to my reunion was. But at least I’ll know I didn’t run away from it, you know?

Open letters are fun, right? Let’s pretend so.

Hi, CJ! I’ve known you a long time, but this is the first time I’ve even known when your birthday was, and certainly the first time I’ve celebrated it. Is that bad? Maybe? I don’t know. I’d forget my own parents’ birthday if I didn’t have it set up in my phone to throw out a huge reminder at me, so I can’t feel too bad about it. I’m just that oblivious, really. But I’m glad I finally get to.

I have never been the kind of person who jumps into anything. Oh, sure, I feign at chaos and such at times, but I always act in a very controlled fashion. I worry and plan and want everything to go well and do everything I can to insure that, instead of just living in the moment. That’s the person I am. And I look back on our relationship and I go “what the fuck, did I really do that so quickly?” It’s been fast and crazy and I wouldn’t trade it for a moment. Because you know what? Things are better, so much better, now that I am not alone in this house. I knew I was kind of lonely here, but I didn’t realize how much until I had someone to run around with, cook dinner for, and laugh with like all the time. We both were lonely, so we tried something crazy, and now here we are, and our insanity is totally, totally working.

This is the start of the family of my dreams, for serious. You being here is the start. It’ll only get better from here. And plus, my parents and brother and sister-in-law are totally taking you out to dinner tonight and buying you presents, so you’re trapped in this thing now with no escape. NO ESCAPE!

I’ve been tired and cranky and working constantly… but you’ve done so much to make that all okay, and hopefully I’ve managed to make your days a little better too. Thank you for being here. Happy Birthday. This may be the first time I celebrate it with you, but it sure as hell won’t be the last.